


The Healing Catalyst

by Nanenna



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Monsters Weren't Sealed Underground, Alternate Universe - Underfell (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Underswap (Undertale), Big Brother Sans (Undertale), Big Brother W. D. Gaster, Canon-Typical Violence, Comedy, Crack Treated Seriously, Environmentalism, Gen, Patchwork AU, Starvation, Underfell Sans (Undertale), Underswap Sans (Undertale), Younger Brother Sans (Undertale), food insecurity, possibly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24631501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanenna/pseuds/Nanenna
Summary: When the destruction they wrought on their own planet became too much and humans left for space to let “Mother nature heal,” they didn’t realize they had left behind all the creatures they long ago declared nothing more than myths and fairy tales. Monsterkind breathed a collective sigh of relief, then they vowed that since the humans decided all on their own to leave that they would never be welcomed back to the home they had abandoned.Meet Blue, the newest recruit to The Scar Maintenance Corps, and Sans, his trainer. It’s their job to make sure the scout ship never finds proof that the Earth is capable of supporting humankind’s return. Namely: plants. Like that one that robot just scooped up and ran off with. Oh boy.
Comments: 39
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Reliable Egregious Disposable](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23977618) by [HailSam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HailSam/pseuds/HailSam). 
  * Inspired by [Underfell](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/763515) by Vic the Underfella. 
  * Inspired by [Underswap](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/763518) by Morty. 



> All the cool authors have several WiPs they jump between, right? Hah hah… it’s all Hailsam’s fault! The horrible enabler! And their wonderful story: [R.E.D.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23977618/chapters/57673927) And also a little bit Nil’s fault with their lovely space pirate fic: [starry-eyed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24045922/chapters/57861520). (Go read these stories, they're both so good.)
> 
> Also: while ClassicCherryBerry is the end goal of this fic they kind of aren't even officially together at the end (maybe, I have it planned but not written yet), and I'm not even sure how much the narration is going to focus on them in the midst of the chaos I have planned. So while it's not tagged as the main draw of the fic there will likely be some CCB content in here, just fair warning for anyone who specifically doesn't want to see that. I also have no idea what else to tag this as so I'll be adding them as I think of them. If you think I should add a tag please let me know!

Sans grumbled to himself as his hand blindly fumbled for his phone, intent solely on turning off his loud, annoying alarm. After knocking what seemed like everything on his dresser off (what did he even keep up there and why?), he finally managed to find his phone and shut the noise off. Then he just lay there, phone clutched to his ribs, sprawled out with his eyes still closed.

Sans’s bedroom door burst open. “Good morning, brother! It’s time to get up and face the new day!”

“’M up,” Sans mumbled sleepily from his prone position on the bed.

Papyrus huffed and crossed his arms, “You may be awake, and I have my doubts about that, but you most certainly aren’t up! Let’s go, out of bed with you! No time for lollygagging if you want a real breakfast and coffee before work.”

Sans cracked open an eye socket to blearily stare up at his exceedingly tall baby brother, “Who made it?”

“Made what? The breakfast or coffee? Worry not, breakfast is still in the works and I made the coffee, of course! As if either of you is able to wake up earlier than The Great Papyrus.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever you say.” Sans sat up and yawned as he stretched.

Satisfied that Sans was now “up,” Papyrus left him to finish getting ready as he headed loudly down the stairs. Sans stood and scratched his sacrum, then set about getting dressed. It took a bit of digging through the piles of clothes scattered in different corners of his room, sniffing the tunics and trousers he pulled out before finally finding clothes that were acceptable, a bit more digging to find a pair of (mismatched) stockings. One last stop before the mirror inside his closet door to make sure he was presentable enough, then Sans was ambling casually down the stairs.

In the kitchen Sans’s little brother was manning the stove top while his littlest (and tallest) brother was setting the table. Sans yawned again as he slid into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “’Mornin’,” he mumbled sleepily.

“Good morning,” Wingdings responded cheerfully from the stove.

“Oh good, you actually got out of bed,” Papyrus said cheerfully as he a placed a steaming mug in front of Sans.

Sans looked up at Papyrus and sincerely said, “Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome, I know how useless you are before your caffeine fix.” Papyrus patted Sans’s head like he was one of the dogs, then went back to bustling about the kitchen.

Soon enough Wingdings was sliding some sizzling bacon and eggs onto his plate while Papyrus was setting out bowls of oatmeal. Sans couldn’t help watching in familiar horror as Papyrus added spoonful after spoonful of pure sugar into his own bowl, then dropped in a handful of little candy stars. Papyrus looked up to find both his brothers staring at him like he’d suddenly grown a second head. “I like the crunch!”

“Yes, well… the amount of sugar to go with the crunch seems a bit excessive.”

“No kidding, my teeth hurt just from looking at it!” Sans exclaimed with a laugh.

“Just because I don’t like my breakfast to be bland and flavorless,” Papyrus grumbled. “I don’t see how it’s any weirder than flavoring it with maple syrup or butter and salt.”

The two older brothers shrugged as they did just that. The usual jabs at each others’ eating habits out of the way, the conversation could now move onto much more interesting topics, mostly what the three brothers had planned for the day. Well mostly it was just Wingdings and Papyrus talking about their plans, Sans’s job was boring and he had no real control over what happened from day to day.

“… that reminds me,” Wingdings was saying, “Asgore has approved my request for a sample of the latest human technology, so when the scouts arrive capture me the latest one Sans.”

“Sorry bro, Undyne’s already informed me I’m gonna be training one of the newbies this round.”

Papyrus snorted, “Really? But she’s always going on and on and on about how lazy and useless you are, that you just barely manage to do enough that it’s not worth firing you.”

“I know, I said pretty much the same thing, but she seems to think I do a pretty decent job training the new guys.” Sans shrugged at that.

“I have told you repeatedly that you’d make an excellent teacher,” Wingdings said in a voice that was carefully, delicately gentle.

“Wouldja look at the time, I gotta get going if I don’t want to be late.” Sans picked up his half finished meal and stood up.

“Wait!” Papyrus said desperately, “At least finish your breakfast!”

Sans looked Papyrus right in the eye socket as he held the plate up to his open mouth, then tipped it so the rest of his food slid right in. Then he poured the coffee right in on top, everything glowing brightly as it was absorbed and incorporated into his mana pool.

Papyrus huffed, but didn’t fight any further as Sans unceremoniously shoved his dishes into the sink, then strolled to the front door. He had slipped his shoes on and was half way out the door when Papyrus came running up, a colorful metal box in his hands. “Don’t forget your lunch!”

“Huh? Oh, uh… thanks.” Sans took the box, weighing it in his hands. “So… what’s in it?”

“My famous spaghetti, of course! With meatballs!”

“Nice. Well I’m off, have a good day.”

“You too.” Papyrus leaned down to plop a kiss on top of Sans’s skull.

Wingdings had come out of the kitchen and leaned down to give Sans a kiss too. “Be careful out there.”

With one final wave Sans finally slipped out of the house. He ambled through a copse of trees just past their porch and shortcut right to the entrance to his work: a re-purposed human building right on the edge of The Scar. He waved to the receptionist and made it all the way to the break room before allowing himself to slump against the nearest wall. He took a few deep, calming breaths, then with a scowl he went over to where everyone kept their lunches and started hunting through them.

“What’re you doing?”

Sans looked up to find the very person(‘s lunch) he’d been looking for. “Hey Undyne, gimme your lunch.” He shoved his own lunch box at her.

“What? No! This is mine, punk!”

“Papyrus made more of **your** spaghetti, this is **your** fault so **you** can eat it.”

Undyne laughed as she traded lunches with him. “You sure you really wanna do that?”

Suspiciously Sans opened up the lunch box Undyne had just handed over, inside was a pile of limp, burnt noodles swimming in crushed vegetable guts and slightly red tinted water. Sans groaned, “Are you serious?”

“You bet I am, punk!” Undyne laughed at Sans’s dismay, great big belly laughs that echoed off the walls and had a few of their coworkers peeking through the doorway.

Sans sighed and poked at the mess before him. “What? No meatballs?”

“Nah, Papyrus isn’t ready to learn something as advanced as meatballs yet, these are just leftovers from our last lesson.”

Sans immediately closed the box and switched back with Undyne. If she hadn’t taught him how to cook meatballs yet then they were probably edible at the very least, certainly no worse than Sans’s own attempts at them would be.

“I don’t see what you’re so fussy for anyway, it’s all just mana once you eat it.”

“Indigestion isn’t fun.”

“What? You get indigestion? Only babies and the wimpiest of weaklings get indigestion!” Undyne looked down at Sans, then burst into more laughter.

Sans grumbled as he found a spot to shove his lunch box, then stalked out the break room and into the locker room. He couldn’t help the way the corners of his grin twitched, like he was trying to hide a genuine smile.

Once in the locker room he quickly opened his own locker and started putting on his gear. First the heavy duty, dark gray pants with reinforced patches over the knees, second a little cowl over his neck that hung down his front, next a heavy duty, faded blue overcoat with the hood left down for now, then the tan brown utility belt, and the off-white, knee length boots with his pants snuggly tucked into them. Lastly he grabbed the matching gloves and full face mask, attaching them to his belt. He dropped his slip-on shoes, wallet, and other personal affects into his locker before shutting it. That taken care of, Sans meandered over to the storage room. It was more like a warehouse, a large echoing room that used to be a hallway attached to many smaller rooms that had their walls removed to make this large space. Along the edge of the room were the remnants of those smaller rooms, partial walls left to partition off sections for different kinds of equipment to be stored.

Undyne was already barking orders from the middle of the room, their coworkers milling about listening and a few even already pulling out some of the equipment. Sans went to go hold a wall up, as one of the trainers he was going to be in the last group. The other designated trainers all leaned up against the wall near him, watching as the crowd around Undyne dwindled down to just the greenhorns.

“Last group!!!” Undyne hollered.

Sans and the others pushed off the wall and went to go cluster around her.

“Sans!”

“Yo,” Sans replied with hand raised.

“You’ll be training Blue here.”

“Oh! That’s me!” A bundle of eye searing cyan, shiny gold, and bright white bounced up to Sans. “Oh wow! Another skeleton, I didn’t know there were any other skeletons working here.”

“Neither did I,” Sans said looking the other monster up and down. Not that he could tell the other even was a skeleton, they were already covered head to toe in protective gear. Most of the other newbies had at least learned not to put on the last layer of PPE until just before leaving, poor kid had probably spent the last half an hour with their face completely covered for no good reason. Sans also thought it was odd that instead of a hood their head was covered in what appeared to be a scarf wrapped around their mouth and head, tucked into their bleached white top, and held in place by the goggles strapped around their head. Through the goggles Sans could just make out a pair of brightly glowing, star shaped, cyan pips against a dark void. Huh, they really were a skeleton. Their gloves, belt, and boots were a matching shade of eye searing cyan as their scarf and eye pips. Even their pants had a tint of cyan to them. Geez, this kid was way too excited about their job if they infused that much matching magic into their clothes.

Sans was too himself to deal with that kind of energy.

“You know which sprayer to use,” Undyne barked at them before moving onto the next name on her list.

Sans took Undyne’s yell as the dismissal it was and motioned for Blue to follow him towards the line up of equipment. While they walked he slipped his mask on, tightened the straps, then pulled up his hood and pulled that tight as well, until not a millimeter of bone was showing (save for his hands).

“Wowee! I haven’t seen anyone with a mask like that before, you even have the weird breathing things.” Blue motioned to his own face, notably lacking in breathing apparatuses.

Sans activated the little gem on his belt buckle that would project his voice. It was a little weird to talk out of his crotch, but it was better than trying to yell through the mask. “Better safe than sorry. Anyway we gotta go pick up our sprayer and get to the transport or Undyne’s gonna kick our sacra.” Sans slipped his gloves on as he spoke, tucking his sleeves into them. “So this little beauty is the Soio 3 gal. back mounted pump action pressure sprayer. It’s one of three and the smallest size they have, so it’s great for little guys like us.” Sans motioned to the bottom shelf of the little half room full of sprayers, the upper shelves used to store the larger ones modded to fit larger monsters.

“So should I put it on or?”

“For the first half of the shift I’ll be wearing it and showing you how it works. But before that we gotta do a quick inspection, last thing anyone needs is herbicide dribbling all over them.” Sans ran Blue over how to inspect the sprayer then strapped it on while Blue watched, the noise of the other trainers going over things with their own newbies a background buzz. Then the group filed out of the room, down the short hallway and out to where their transport was waiting for them. Like most of their work equipment it used to be human technology, something called a “tour bus” back when humans were still around. It’d since been stripped down, refurbished, and re-purposed with what was then the latest and greatest magitech available. It was still a pretty impressive piece of work, two and a half centuries of upkeep and upgrading will do that.

“Everybody on board!” Undyne hollered gleefully.

Sans clambered into the thing and moved as far back as he could, then sat facing sideways on the seat, his feat dangling in the widened aisle. Blue sat across from him, his own feet swinging while they waited for everyone else to get seated. Pretty soon the transport was full, the door closed, the engine started, and they lifted up into the air. Sans was glad he was facing away from his window, through the far windows he could only catch a few glimpses of the tree tops sinking below them and not watch as they left verdant greenery behind them and traveled out into the heart of a blasted, ruined, broken wasteland.

The transport touched down and everyone filed out, most thanking the driver as they got off. Everyone was quick to head out in different directions the moment their feet touched broken asphalt.

“Remember,” Undyne yelled at their retreating backs, “stay in pairs! See you lot in four hours or you’re going to miss lunch!”

Sans waved his hand to show he heard her, but didn’t slow his pace as they wandered off into the decaying ruins of what was once a human city. They watched a rusty robot trundle up to them, pause, then eventually go around them. It squeaked and creaked up to some garbage laying around, piling rusty metal, broken plastic, crumbling rubber, and soggy paper into its empty body before wobbling unsteadily to the next pile of garbage.

“Ugh, haven’t they ever heard of separating their garbage?” Blue asked indignantly.

“Yeah,” Sans said with a sigh. “So kid-”

“I’m an adult,” Blue shot back defensively.

“Uh… yeah? You gotta be to get hired for this job???” Though with an attitude like that Sans wasn’t so sure.

“Yes! Right! Just so we’re clear.”

“Ok ki-… buddy, they go over what exactly we’re doing?”

“It’s our job to keep the humans from ever coming back!”

“Right, but I bet you knew that even before signing up for this gig.”

Blue sighed and started reciting like he was reading from a school book, “Every five years a ship carrying scout robots returns to look for signs that Earth is recovering, it’s our job to maintain The Scar as a 100 mi2 area of untouched desolation because for some reason it’s the one and only place the humans send the scout bots to.”

“Right, so if you see anything living that isn’t one of our coworkers you let me know.”

“Right!” Blue replied cheerfully, bouncing along besides Sans as they headed further into the ruins, ready to mess up some poor plant’s day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stockings may not mean what you think they mean. Most people think of them as pantyhose: partially see through women’s underclothing, but here stockings actually just means tall socks. 
> 
> Okay, so I know this chapter was all just set up, but we get into the action next chapter I promise.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot gets off the ground. Literally.

Sans groaned as he reached for his phone to shut off the alarm, hand fumbling this way and that before finally finding it and managing to turn the darn thing off. With the noise gone he lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling as he worked up the motivation to actually get out of bed.

His door burst open. “Good morning, brother!”

“Hey, bro.” Sans mustered up the energy to give Papyrus a lazy wave.

“Wowee! Your eyes are actually open, you’re getting better at getting up at a reasonable time. It only took twelve years of working a job with regular hours for it to happen.”

“Heh, yeah. In another twelve years I might even be sitting up when you barge in.”

“We can only hope! Now hurry up and get dressed, Wingdings is making waffles. How fortunate, a decadent celebratory breakfast for your improving habits.”

Sans cringed, “Yeah, waffles… sound great.”

“I certainly think so, last time we went grocery shopping he noticed a premade dry ingredients mix, all we have to do is add in eggs and milk.”

That didn’t sound so bad, even they could manage measuring out three ingredients. “Alright, sounds like it could be a fun little… uh… thing. To try.”

“Indeed, so hurry up!” Papyrus shut the door behind him, leaving Sans alone to get his day started.

Sans yawned and stretched, then crawled out of bed and started digging through the pile of clothes on the floor of his closet. He found his softest, comfiest tunic, the pair of trousers that fit him best, and even a pair of matching stockings. And what the hell, he hated how they bunched up in his boots so for maximum comfort he even tied on a pair of garters just below his knee. He gave himself a nod in the mirror, then headed down for some breakfast.

There was a steaming mug of coffee already sitting on the table, both his younger brothers crowded together near the stove. They seemed to be intensely discussing something as quietly as possible.

“Oh dear, the eggs are burning! I think I turned the heat up too much,” Wingdings groused as he seemingly turned his attention back to the sizzling stove top.

“Nonsense! I keep telling you to turn the heat up higher, let your passion burn through the stove!”

“Papyrus, eggs are literally babies,” Sans spoke up as he savored the smell of his coffee. “What does Undyne say about babies?”

“That they’re weak and wimpy and you have to be very gentle with them.”

Wingdings sighed in relief, “That’s a very good point Sans, thank you!”

“Yes, I’ve learned something new today and we haven’t even had breakfast yet! Truly a landmark day.”

“The waffle iron,” Wingdings said hurriedly.

“Oh!” Papyrus turned his attention to the counter right next to the stove, his broad back blocking Sans’s sight from the mysterious things happening in that corner of the kitchen. Sans just took the moment to enjoy his coffee.

The breakfast that eventually got put before him was certainly something else: a waffle much darker than any he’d ever seen, a large sausage, and rather than Wingdings’s usual sunny side up it seemed he’d attempted scrambled eggs. Sans picked up his fork and poked at the large, singular, rubbery egg blob on his plate. “This uh… this looks like food.”

Sans poked the waffle next, it was kind of firm and very crispy. Okay, this was not a sit and savor it kind of breakfast. Sans picked up his plate and used the fork to help guide everything into his mouth. Papyrus sputtered indignantly while Wingdings just looked kind of resigned. Sans licked his teeth, “Oh hey, the sausage was really good.”

“Thanks.”

Sans then went back to nursing his coffee, “So how’s things on your end?”

“Great! We’ve already taken several scans of the ship, I’m hoping I can convince Undyne to let us poke around on the inside, we still have a few days before it loads back up again. But today I get to go pick out which scout bot I want captured.”

“We’re doing that tomorrow, right? That’ll be fun.”

“I thought you were too busy training to help with bot wrangling.”

“I am. Such a pity, I’m going to have to stay far away from all the excitement and miss out on the fun.”

Wingdings stuck his tongue out at Sans.

“What about you, Papyrus? Anything fun planned for today?”

Papyrus looked up from pouring flavored syrup all over his waffle, “Just more classes today, not even any exciting tests at the moment. And no hanging out either, Undyne won’t be able to until after the ship leaves again.”

“I thought you had plans to hang out with some of your classmates?” Wingdings asked.

“It’s just a study group, and that’s not until this weekend.”

They fell into chatter after that, happily talking about coworkers and classmates and the latest news. Then Sans noticed the time. “Oh shoot, it’s getting pretty late.” He downed the last dredges of his coffee, then put his dishes in the sink. Then he went hunting for a clean lunch box and started filling it up.

“Oh my.”

Sans turned around to see both Papyrus and Wingdings staring gleefully at him. “What?”

“Your stockings match.”

“And what lovely embroidery they have.”

“These old things?” Sans lifted his foot to show the utter mess the bottom was, “That I’ve had to darn like fifty times? I was lucky and stumbled on a matching pair.”

“You notice he’s packing a lunch too?” Wingdings asked in a loud whisper as he leaned closer to Papyrus.

“I got tired of eating the exact same thing every single day.”

“He cooked it himself,” Papyrus said in an equally loud whisper, “one of his non-sugary egg pies.”

“It’s called a kumquat,” Sans said with exaggerated tiredness. The kitchen fell silent after that, which Sans took advantage of to quickly finish packing his lunch. Too bad he was pretty sure he was missing Papyrus trying to figure out a come back to that. Then he rushed to give each of his brothers a quick hug and a peck on the side of their skulls. “Alright you two trouble makers, have fun and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Same to you, brother!”

“Can’t do anything stupid if you don’t do anything at all,” Sans replied with a wink right as he left the house. He headed straight for the break room, where he almost walked right into Blue as he was leaving it. “Oh, hey, morning.”

“Good morning, Sans! How are you?”

“I’m doing good, how you doing?”

“Great!” Blue grinned cheerfully at him as he followed him back into the break room. “More of your little brother’s amazing cooking?”

“No, actually, I did some baking this weekend so I wouldn’t have to survive off the cafeteria food.”

“It is awful, isn’t it? I didn’t know food could be so uncomfortably neutral.”

Sans laughed, “Wow! That really is the best way to describe it.”

Blue fairly beamed at the compliment. “Thank you! I’ve been told I have a way with words. So, are you ready for the day?”

“As ready as I ever am.” Lunch now stowed away, the pair headed towards the locker room. “Really I’m just ready for the scout ship to leave already.”

“I still have no idea what I’m going to do with a whole month off.”

Sans shrugged, “Rest? Pick up a hobby you’ve been meaning to for a while? Hang out with friends or family?”

“No family to hang out with aside from my little brother, but hanging out with friends sounds nice. I haven’t seen some of my old buddies since high school! Oh, but most of them are too busy.”

“Could always hang out with a work friend, all of us are gonna have the month off too.”

“That’s true. Oh! We should exchange numbers!”

“What? Really?”

“Of course! You’re my friend too, right?”

“Yeah, sure. We can watch a movie or something.” Sans pulled out his phone and hastily opened up a new contact. Once they both had each other’s number they finally walked into the locker room, the one they’d been loitering right in the doorway of, and started changing into their protective gear. Unfortunately their lockers weren’t next to each other so they had to practically yell over the row of lockers between them to keep chatting as they changed, but they did. They traded jokes with each other and their coworkers as they waited for Undyne to hand out assignments for the day and eagerly talked about all the things they could do with their time off as they were ferried out to the heart of The Scar. Sans was so distracted he didn’t even feel the usual pain in his Soul at seeing the careless destruction they were tasked with maintaining.

Once on the ground again they all waved their goodbyes as they headed out for their rounds. The pair continued to chat idly as they trudged through the ruined cityscape, throwing out ideas for places to hang out. Some of them were mundane, like people watching at an outdoor café, and some of them were outrageous, like take the entire Scar Maintenance Corps to karaoke.

“I did like your movie suggestion,” Blue commented as they scrambled over a precarious pile of garbage. “Were you thinking of staying in or going to a theater?”

“Dunno, hadn’t thought that far ahead. I guess going to see a new movie would be more interesting.”

“Isn’t there going to be a new Mettaton movie out soon?”

“Yeah, but it’s just a recording of the concert tour he just went on.”

“I think that’ll be worth watching! I was disappointed I couldn’t go, especially since Vevobot was featured as a guest artist.”

“Eh, I can’t say I’m really into their music.”

“What?! How can you say that?”

“It’s all just party music, I’m not really into the party lifestyle.”

“It’s not just party music! Vevobot’s driving beats are great for all kinds of situations: jogging, while riding the bus, at the gym, and even at parties.”

“I don’t really do any of those things.”

“Then who’s music do you like?”

“Napstablook, their music and Shyren’s vocals are the only reason I listen to Mettaton’s stuff to begin with.”

Blue stopped dead in his tracks, “No! Mettaton as the voice of an angel! How can you not like his singing?”

“He has the voice of a computer chip.” Sans would know, Alphys had shown him the old one she’d replaced after upgrading his body once a few years back. “Not that he needs one, but I guess he likes that autotune sound?”

“It’s clearly an artistic choice! One that works well for him and has become a part of his performing signature.”

“Sure, and one that works great when backed by Napstablook’s music, but not so great with his acting.”

Blue gasped indignantly, “You don’t like his acting?!”

Sans just gave a shrug for his answer.

“But his movies are… so…” Blue trailed off as he stared at something behind Sans in confusion. “What’s that thing doing?”

Sans looked behind himself to see the scout bot they’d been tailing closing up a hidden compartment he didn’t even know they had. There was a bunch of freshly turned up ground right in front of it. A green light came on on the robot’s front.

Sans cursed.

“That bad?”

“I think it just found a live plant!”

Blue cursed as they both started chasing the robot. Sans paused to look over the torn up ground, there was what looked like a few bits of roots and a dropped leaf. A fresh leaf, still a vibrant green. He cursed and took chase again. The damned thing was heading straight for its ship at a ridiculous pace.

“We can’t let it get on the ship,” Sans hollered needlessly.

Blue didn’t respond, just kept running at break neck speed. He was slowly gaining on the thing while Sans was starting to lag. Sans cursed again. It was unwise to use external magic within The Scar, but he was seriously considering attempting a shortcut to get ahead of the thing. The ship was coming into view.

Sans hollered and waved his arms, then realized there was no one near the ship. Right, Wingdings and his team were out picking out which robot he wanted to take. Sans huffed and puffed as he focused back on just running as fast as he could.

As he watched a couple of the scout bots rolled up into the ship. Sans and Blue both cursed. The robot they were chasing made it into the ship just as Blue got to the ramp, without slowing his stride he ran up into the ship. Doing all he could not to break down gasping and wheezing, Sans followed.

The inside of the ship was cramped, mostly it was just rows of alcoves for the scout bots to slot into. Dangling in the middle were three robotic arms that looked like something out of a horror movie. Blue was already a couple rows up, trying to pry their target up from where it was already slotted in.

Sans absently dodged the swinging arms as he climbed up to join Blue. Together they grunted and heaved, their gloved phalanges slipping over the smooth plastic of the robot. Out of sheer frustration Sans summoned a bullet and aimed it at the robot.

“What’re you doing?! We were warned how badly external magic reacts to radiation!”

“We gotta stop it somehow!” Sans slammed the bullet into the scout. As expected for something with no soul it didn’t do any damage, just every light on the thing lit up, flickered, then went out.

“Congratulations, you turned it off.”

“Hopefully we can just pry the front open and take the plant out.”

“Oh.” They both started scrabbling at the robot’s front, but the clamp keeping it in its slot was in the way. “We can’t.”

“Maybe if we shut off the computer controlling the ship…”

“How about we don’t use any more magic?” Blue then started trying to pry up the clamp.

“How about we get some help and maybe some actual tools?”

“Great idea!” They both shimmied down the rows, now all completely full of robots, and started running for the door when it slammed shut.

They both cursed. Loudly.

The arms seemed to be doing one last rapid fire check, Blue and Sans had to dodge repeatedly to avoid getting bludgeoned by them. Then the arms suddenly tucked themselves into their own cubby. Right in front of the door.

“Control computer,” Sans said faintly.

“Where would it be?”

“The nose, maybe?” They started climbing back up, desperately trying to find anything that looked like it was an access panel or in any way control computer looking. Sans’s fragile hopes were dashed when the whole ship started rumbling.

“Damnit. Get down!”

“What?”

Sans was already dropping down to the floor, “It’s taking off, get down or get slammed down when the Gs hit.” Sans’s knees ached from jumping down, but he ignored that as he quickly laid out flat on his back, already removing his mask and laying it down next to him.

Blue quickly joined him on the floor, just barely having sat down when the ship started to lift and he all but fell to laying out flat. The pressure became unbearable, Sans tried lifting an arm but could barely get his hand to move before it was slammed back into the floor. He would have been amazed if he weren’t terrified.

Was the ship air tight? Would they bother with that for a bunch of nonliving automatons? What would the vacuum of space do to a monster’s body? Monsterkind had never bothered doing any experiments with even the upper atmosphere, let alone actual space! Skeletons didn’t have lungs or blood or organs, would they be able to survive in a vacuum? Probably not, skeletons could breathe damn near anything but they still needed to breathe.

And then the pressure eased, they must have reached cruising speed. Sans quickly slipped his mask back on and tightened his hood around it, a flimsy and probably useless bit of protection but it made him feel better. If nothing else it would help protect from the temperature he could already feel rapidly dropping, or maybe that was just his imagination. He sent up a silent prayer to The Angel that the protective spells in his clothes would be enough.

“We’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t we?” Blue asked weakly.

“Yeah.” All kinds of trouble, but Sans was only going to focus on the trouble right in front of them for now. “Listen, we don’t know how long this ride is going to be, but we’ll feel it when this thing gets there. So until then it’s best if we find a safe place to tuck in and hibernate.”

“Hibernate?” Blue asked skeptically.

“Yeah, you know: slow our mana and breathing. Put ourselves into a kind of meditative sleep.”

“I’ve never tried meditating before.”

“I’ll show you, don’t worry.” Sans kicked off the ground and floated up, it kind of reminded him of when he and his brothers had first started learning to use gravity magic when they were young. Blue followed him up to the ceiling, where Sans was already scoping out how the arms were connected to it. “It’ll slow in the opposite direction, so if we don’t want to get woken up by a concussion it’s best to be up here.”

“Okay,” Blue agreed as he let Sans pull him over to a nook. There was such a small space between the housing for the arms and the wall that the best way to keep snugly in that space was to curl around each other. Sans hoped the ship will decelerate slower than it accelerated, or they could be in for a very rude awakening.

As Sans talked Blue through how to put himself into a meditative state he tried not to think about how he had actually managed to get into space and just how much had to and still was going horribly wrong to get him there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Garters could be an elastic piece of fabric or straps attached to a belt used to keep your stockings up, but here they’re just simple ribbons tied just above or below the knee. Fun fact: the embroidery on stockings used to be called clocks and we have no idea why. And yes, I **do** enjoy watching historical dress videos on youtube, however did you guess?
> 
> Vevobot is the name I gave to Swap Napstblook, they’re a techno musician that mostly uses samples to make lyrics when they don’t have on a guest artist to sing. Think Daft Punk. Also a robotic DJ body to possess and they’re one of MTT’s many, many ghost cousins.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those left behind react to the scout ship's sudden departure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, bit of a PoV change for some reaction thoughts. We’ll get back to our little cosmonauts next chapter, I promise!

Wingdings motioned to the human scout robot he and his teammate were currently observing, “Are you sure, we know they get repaired between visits.”

“Cleaned, repaired, polished, but there’s only so much they can do without magic,” Dr. Geraldine said confidently. “This one is new, look at the lack of wear on the joints.”

“What joints?” Wingdings shot back, a sarcastic lilt to his hands as he signed along with the words. Then he turned to Undyne, “I want to get a scan of it to confirm, but I think this one will do.”

“Let’s get closer then, let you nerds get your science on!” Undyne grinned before spinning around and brazenly running ahead of the duo.

Behind her back Wingdings surreptitiously signed, “Why Alphys has a crush on her I’ll never know.”

Dr. Geraldine hid a snicker behind her hands.

And then they had to go catch up with her. Fortunately the scout robots were working methodically and predictably, so it wasn’t long before they caught up. Wingdings was already pulling out his scanner as they approached. Just as he was about to start scanning the robot it froze, mid scan itself. The vaguely egg-shaped automaton floated gently in place, a few lights on its front blinked rapidly. That was new, Wingdings quickly turned on his scanner and started moving around the still robot.

“Huh, that’s different,” Undyne said.

“Likely an interruption in communication with the ship,” Geraldine reassured. “We know from past dissections that they rely on the ship for most of their instructions, the scouts have rudimentary programming at best.”

Before Undyne could reply the robot sped off, pulling a quick u-turn around them before disappearing into the urban labyrinth they were surrounded by. The two scientists gave startled cries and started running after it when Undyne grabbed Wingdings and threw him over her shoulder like a sack of particularly bony potatoes, running in the opposite direction.

“We have to go after it!” Wingdings huffed frantically, though he didn’t know why he bothered when he was hanging down Undyne’s back.

“Can you keep up on foot without magic?”

“Oh.” Wingdings could feel is face flush with mana and was thankful both for the mask and goggles hiding his face and the fact Undyne couldn’t see him. She dropped him into the front passenger seat of the small transport they used to hop around the city (a refurbished “golf cart”), then she ran around and hopped into the driver’s seat. They were already lifting off before Wingdings was even properly in the seat and already quickly gaining on the robot.

“It’s heading back to the ship,” Undyne roared.

Wingdings had thought so too, but he hated having it confirmed. He patted her arm and pointed over his side of the cart, there were more scouts racing towards the ship. They were approaching the backside of the ship, but coming from ever direction they could see more scout robots lining up with mechanical precision to file up the ramp and into the ship. “They’ve never done that before.”

“What?”

Wingdings sighed, then had his bullet hands sign in front of Undyne, “They. Have. Never. Done. That. Before.”

“No, they haven’t.” The grim way she said that wasn’t reassuring at all. The cart slowed as they circled around to the front. Through the open door they could see precise, mechanical movements of something large within the dark space. The line of robots filing into the ship was already dwindling down to the last few.

“Is that all of them?”

“The only way to know would’ve been to count them.”

“We could go look inside to count them,” Wingdings suggested. The fact he’d been trying for years to get permission to actually go inside the ship and had always been denied had nothing at all to do with the suggestion.

The door slammed shut and sealed with a hiss. Undyne just gave him a LookTM.

“It’s not actually about to leave, is it?” Wingdings asked, though he already suspected the answer.

“It’s just barely been a week, why would they suddenly leave early?”

“The only reason for anything with programming to stray from established patterns is if something triggered a previously unknown set of instructions.”

“There’s only one thing they’re here for,” Undyne ground out grimly.

Wingdings felt a chill run up his spine, “No.”

Other monsters were arriving, huffing and puffing as they ran up. Undyne was barking out orders, yelling at them to help her stop the ship from leaving. “If we all push from one side maybe we can knock it over! I’ll use the cart for a better angle, I think we got some ropes packed away too. Hurry!” A whirring sound came from the ship, followed by light and heat scorching the already scorched ground underneath it, dust and pebbles that had gathered under it were knocked away. “Shit! Stand clear! Back off! Back off!”

The monsters that had arrived were already scrambling away for cover. Undyne grabbed the nearest few and tossed them into the back of the cart, then revved the engines as she turned and gunned it to get out of the blast radius. Wingdings reached over the seat to help keep the poor monsters from falling out the back while they figured out what exactly was going on.

The ship’s engines started to roar.

Undyne quickly tucked the cart behind the nearest standing building, keeping it between them and the rising ship. The roar only grew louder. Wingdings slapped his hands over the sides of his skull, the gloves actually helped muffle the roaring. It was still unbearably loud. So loud his acoustic canals were ringing.

Undyne patted him on the shoulder, then once she saw she had his attention she pointed out the windshield. Wingdings had to lean forward so he could look up as well, but he saw an arcing trail of pale smoke leading to a distant plume of fire.

“Oh.” His voice sounded strange.

Undyne started signing, her hands clumsy with clear lack of practice, “How’re your ears?”

He briefly considered going with the old “skeletons don’t have ears” joke, but then remembered this was kind of a major emergency. He just signed back, “Bell.”

“Same. Now sit.”

Wingdings did so, settling firmly into the seat next to Undyne and gripping the handle bar to his right, Undyne’s driving is a bit wild even on her best days. Today is certainly no one’s best day (except maybe the humans, but Wingdings was actively trying not to think about that. It wasn’t working very well.)

Undyne was yelling into the radio attached to the non-existent dash of the cart, something about buses and nurses. Wingdings was pretty sure they needed both, so he wholeheartedly supported that plan.

The cart touched down near the now doubly scorched ground, wisps of smoke still rising from the blackened concrete. Undyne quickly hopped out, then up onto the roof where she stood and yelled, “Everyone return to base! The buses are on their way, go to your pick up points!”

The few monsters poking out from their hiding places shook their heads and pointed to their ears, clearly they were having just as much trouble as they themselves were.

Wingdings sighed, then made a pair of large hand bullets to sign Undyne’s instructions. Once they seemed to get the picture Undyne swung back into their little cart, rocking it worryingly in the process. Then she turned and hollered at the monsters behind them, “You too! Everyone back to the buses they came in on! We’re doing a headcount!”

Wingdings winced, that was practically yelled into his already hurting skull. The monsters nodded and got off the cart to go make their way to their own pick up points. Then Undyne just sat and waited. Wingdings was confused on why until Dr. Geraldine slipped into the back seat.

“Everybody ready to go?” Undyne bellowed at them.

Both scientists nodded.

“Alright, hold on tight, we aren’t waited for the buses.”

Wingdings tightened his grip on the handle. Then they were in the air, rising up and over most of the rubble, weaving between the decaying remnants of skyscrapers. The wind whistling around Wingding’s head was strangely muffled and hard to hear over the ringing. He hoped that wasn’t permanent. Not only was the wind loud, but it was tearing at their clothes, Wingdings had to grip his hood with the hand that wasn’t clinging to the handle. That was one of the reasons they normally used the small cart only for hopping around the city and loaded it on a bus for getting to and from The Scar Maintenance Headquarters. It was also slower than a bus, even with the speed boost from being refurbished it couldn’t match speeds with the buses that were currently rising into the air in the distance.

It took a while to even draw even with the buses, let alone get all the way back to headquarters. Still faster than waiting would have been, but it just gave too much time for Wingdings’s mind to sit in a pool of anxiety, his thoughts spinning and spinning. Eventually they arrived and went straight into decontamination.

“Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Wingdings asked in confusion.

“Like what?” Undyne shot back.

“I don’t know, calling someone?”

“We can call Asgore after this, the last thing we need is to be spreading around herbicides and fallout on top of everything else.”

“We should also contact the lab, see if they tracked the take off and find out if the ship sent any messages,” Dr. Geraldine added, her signing much smoother than Undyne’s sloppy movements.

“Oh right, of course. That’s a good idea, thank you. I think it might be best if you call the lab while I stick with Undyne for calling Asgore.” Wingdings let his arms fall after that, unsure what else to add.

Once they were declared free of contaminants the three of them quickly went to the locker room to change out of their heavy protective gear and back into more comfortable clothes, then Undyne led them into the big hall/storage area. Already there were several monsters in scrubs setting up triage stations in the open area in the center of the room.

“The space ship was really loud,” Undyne hollered, several monsters winced. “There will probably mostly be hearing loss.”

“We’re all set up to start treatment here,” one of the monsters in scrubs signed. “Come on then,” they pointed to the cots next to them in the neat row. The three of them each sat on their own cot and then through an examination. A physical exam, a magical diagnostic, and a round of healing magic later and Wingdings sighed in relief to hear the ringing stop altogether, the strange muffled quality was also gone.

“How’s that?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“That’s good. No more tinnitus? Not muffled? No pain? Good, good. A hot meal and a good night’s sleep then. Make sure to schedule an appointment with your regular doctor so they can make sure there’re no lasting affects. Also it’s probably going to be quite loud in here soon, so you’d best scoot on out of the way.”

“Thank you, I think I will.” Wingdings stood and moved towards the entrance, where Undyne was waiting for him. “Time to call Asgore?”

“Yeah. C’mon, we got a phone line that’ll get us directly to him.” Undyne led him to a room he hadn’t been to before, one he supposed he hadn’t needed to. There wasn’t much in the room: some filing cabinets and a desk with a regular landline phone, a monitor, and a few papers sitting on top. Undyne got behind the desk and opened a drawer, from it she pulled out a really old fashioned landline phone, the kind that would have a rotary instead of keys to press. It was bright red.

“That seems… primitive.”

“Sometimes it’s the primitive stuff that works the best.” Undyne picked up the handset and pressed the single black button on its front. “Undyne, emergency at The Scar Maintenance Headquarters, we need Asgore on a conference call ASAP. Uhuh. Yeah. Okay, thanks.” She hung the phone back up and tucked it back away into the drawer. “Alright, now we just get all set up here.” She started fiddling with the computer, awkwardly leaning over the chair and desk to do so. Once she was satisfied with whatever she was doing she pulled the chair out of the way and motioned for Wingdings to join her standing back against the wall.

They just stood there for a good minute, maybe two, then the computer made an alert sound. Undyne had to step forward to deal with that, then she stepped back again as a holographic screen lit up and expanded until flat, glowing, see through renditions of Asgore and Toriel were standing just in front of the desk.

“What has happened?” Asgore asked even as the hologram settled.

“The human ship left,” Undyne said bluntly. She waited a moment, then when neither Asgore nor Toriel seemed to know how to respond she elaborated, “All of the scout robots filed back into the ship and it took off. Back into space. It’s gone.”

“It is a few days earlier than scheduled, is it not?”

“This has never happened before,” Toriel added worriedly.

“I haven’t had a chance to contact the Lab yet,” Wingdings said, signing along with his words, “but I want to find out if it made any transmissions. With any luck we’ll soon learn exactly why it left.”

“But you already have a theory,” Toriel said.

“I don’t want to speculate but…” Wingdings hesitated, then straightened his spine and said more confidently, “The ship was here for only one reason, for it to pack up and leave early like that the only logical conclusion to come to is that the scout robots found something. There is a very real chance that in the near future the humans will return. But we can’t be sure until we’ve had a chance to check the ship’s transmissions.”

“Thank you, doctor. For now we’ll have to prepare for the worst.”

Wingdings nodded.

“Undyne, do you have anything else to report?”

“Several monsters were very close to the ship when it took off, we’re screening for injuries and I’ll have a full report on your desk as soon as we’re done with that.”

“Very well, once you have finished that I want to redirect The Scar Maintenance resources to help repel the humans, if that is the course we decide on. Doctor, I want you to-”

“Undyne!” A muscular rabbit burst through Undyne’s office door, then sheepishly backed into the hallway when they saw the hologram. “Um…”

“This had better be important.”

“It, like, really is.”

Undyne motioned for the rabbit to come into the office, then put her fists on her hips, “Spit it out already!”

The rabbit sheepishly came into the room, practically having to turn sideways to fit through the door. They stepped a little to the side so they wouldn’t have to look at Undyne through the hologram, though their eyes kept straying to it. “A bus just reported, like, two monsters missing.”

Undyne cursed under her breath. Asgore and Toriel both frowned at her, but kept their peace. “Who’s missing?” Undyne bit out.

The rabbit’s eyes flitted over to Wingdings, then back to Undyne. “Sans and Blue.”

“ _No._ ”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sans wakes up. Blue tries to wake up, he really does.

Sans was right about the spacecraft decelerating, the feeling of gravity suddenly increasing pulled Sans from his torpor-like meditative state. He quickly sent a pulse of magic through Blue even as he himself struggled back to consciousness, the Intent of _wake up_ strong. Your first time coming out of torpor was always a long, slow struggle and they didn’t know how much time they had. Sans ripped his mask off again. At least the ship seemed to be sealed, he was pretty sure they’d have suffocated if they’d been exposed to the vacuum of space. But honestly they had no way of knowing.

Sans lay sprawled out as best he could, the ceiling wasn’t designed for this, and just kept flexing his fingers and toes while blinking. He hoped the strong gravity wouldn’t hinder his mana from starting to flow properly again. Blue groaned and twitched.

“C’mon, buddy, time to wake up.” He hesitantly reached above his head to nudge at Blue, he needed to start moving to wake up faster.

It was pretty amazing he could reach up like that, the gravity wasn’t as intense as it had been at take off. It would probably take longer to decelerate down to standing still, if they even went that far. There was always the possibility of a moving target. Relatively speaking. Well, that wouldn’t change the fact that they’d be back to microgravity once acceleration was down to zero, regardless of velocity.

He nudged Blue again a little harder this time. He really had no idea what kind of timeline they were working with but his life would be much easier if he didn’t have to lug a half conscious monster around with him. Even if he lucked out and they had microgravity it would still be awkward and he was pretty sure he’d need both hands.

It took a while more of nudging Blue and telling him to wake up while staring down at the floor above them. It was a boring view, he wished the ship had windows. Then again he probably wouldn’t have slept at all if it had windows. Maybe wherever the humans were living now had windows. Sans couldn’t help the manic giggle that escaped him.

“Wha?” Blue asked blearily.

“Just thinking, you awake yet? Start stretching, get that mana flowing. Fingers and toes.”

Blue grumbled, but started doing as he was told. “Mngh… ‘eavy.”

“Yeah, we’re decelerating. Not as many Gs as take off, but it’s still really noticeable. Been at it for a while though, that’s the trade off.” The gravity suddenly got heavier for a few moments, then eased off almost completely. “Whoops, guess we’re there. Hope you’re ready to move.”

Blue made some sort of mumbled response.

Sans tugged them both over to the wall and slipped down so he was clinging to the top row of scout bots. He had no idea which direction gravity would point or even if there would be any, so a wall with good hand holds seemed like the best choice. He pressed Blue up against the bots, then draped himself over Blue and got a firm hold on the bots, braced for impact or sudden changes in gravity.

“Hey, while we’re docking it’s cognitive functionality test time.”

“Ugh, no thanks,” Blue slurred.

“What’s your brother’s name?”

“Uh…” Blue blinked curiously up at Sans, like he was confused by the question. “Rus.”

“Good, keep flexing your hands and feet, gotta keep the mana flowing. So tell me about Rus.”

“He’s uh… he’s younger ‘an me by a few years.”

“How many?” Sans pressed.

“Thirteen.”

“Yeah? Bet you hated not being the only child anymore.” The ship jolted under them, gravity didn’t change. “Think we’re outta time, how’re your reflexes? Can you at least hold onto something?” The arms in the center of the ship started moving, running through a test program judging from the way they ran through their motion ranges.

“Mmmmaybe???”

Not very reassuring, but Sans wasn’t sure he could work and help Blue wake up at the same time. The bars holding the bots in place started lifting one by one as the arms grabbed the bots and set them on the floor. They must have had some kind of magnetic mechanism in their anti-grav rigs because they floated out the door in the exact same way they had back on Earth.

Shit, when’d the door open?

“Hope you got a good koala impersonation, we gotta get moving.” Sans kept one hand and foot hooked into the robots while he used the other arm to pull Blue up and around to his back. Microgravity was amazing! Or maybe this was even true zero gravity, Sans had no way of knowing from here. “There ya go, hold on tight.”

At first Blue just grabbed fistfuls of Sans’s coat, it took a bit more coaxing to get him to actually wrap his arms around Sans’s neck and then his legs around Sans’s waist, turning Blue into a living backpack. “Alright, hold on tight and keep wriggling what you can, it’s hard to wake up but you need to. Keep talking, tell me all about Rus.”

“I already told you ‘bout Rus,” Blue whined with a heavy, pronounced slur. “He’s so lazy, tired all the time. Is ‘cause he don’t sleep, he’s just so tired all the time.”

“Yeah, insomnia’s a real pain like that,” Sans said absently as he pulled himself down to the robot they had followed, feet floating freely behind him. The bar locking their robot in popped open, Sans immediately lunged forward to try wrestling the darn thing’s insides open. His phalanges scrabbled uselessly at its front trying to find the seams. Then he was knocked rudely aside by a robot arm.

“Oof!”

“You okay back there?” The pair had been knocked sideways into the surrounding robots, they both likely had the wind knocked out of them.

“I… I think so?”

“Heh, you sound a bit more awake.” Sans patted the hands around his neck, then angled himself to kick off the nearest surface and float down to the floor.

“Nothing like a good panic to wake you up,” Blue said with only a little slurring.

“Oop!” They hit the floor a little too hard and were about to go spinning off, but Sans managed to grab onto the robot. It was still deactivated, completely unresponsive. The arms seemed to know this because none of them were moving, one just holding the thing. While Sans debated between staying poised to kick off after the bot or trying to cling to it in hopes the arm or whatever the arms are waiting for doesn’t knock him off (again), he absently said, “Yeah, but then you tend to crash again later. There’s only so far running on adrenaline will take you.”

Poised sounded like the better option. Sans got into a good spot and waited. “Flex your jaw, rotate your wrists and ankles, keep your mana flowing, pal.”

“Right, right,” Blue said grumpily, but Sans felt him start doing as he was told. Good, that was good.

“Don’t let your grip go though, might have to take off suddenly to stay with that bot we chased.”

“Right, right, I forgot that’s what we were doing.”

“Everyone’s always disoriented the first time they come out of torpor.”

A pair of humans floated into the ship, one catching themself on the still arms and the other bumping into the first when they didn’t stop. “Hey, watch it!”

“Why’d you suddenly stop?!”

“Because there’s no further to go???”

“Oh, right, that makes sense.”

Sans froze and stared in horror, he could feel that Blue had gone stiff as well. The first humans either of them had ever seen in person, far more than they thought they’d ever see in person if Sans were honest with himself. it was hard to see any details on them, between the dull blue coveralls, the gloves, the boots, and full face mask it was hard to tell them apart from a monster geared up to go visit The Scar. They looked over the ship and Sans nearly had a panic attack when their eyes passed over him and Blue. Then he remembered he still had his glamour up and they wouldn’t even notice him.

“So which one has the uh… the “plant”?”

“Dunno, what’s up with this one.” Both humans looked down at the deactivated robot.

“Huh, that’s a good question.”

There was a beep behind them, they both turned around to see some sort of cart looking thing hovering in the doorway.

“Ah, repair transport, guess that explains this little guy. More importantly where’s this plant? The logs say there was a positive.”

“I hope it’s not one of the ones that was released before we got here.”

“Oh no, that’s probably it. Let’s go catch up!” With that the two humans easily swung out of the door and bounced off the far wall to start floating gracefully down a hallway and out of Sans’s line of sight.

Sans breathed a sigh of relief.

“Oh my goodness! Real life humans! That was so exciting!”

“Exciting’s the word alright.” Sans kicked off, aiming for the cart looking thing the arms were attaching the offline bot onto. He overshot and had to brace to keep from hitting the wall. Blue started flailing. “Stop swimming, we aren’t in water!”

“Sorry!”

“No, sorry, I shouldn’t yell. You probably haven’t played around in zero G with your bro as much as I have. Or watched all those training videos.”

“What training videos?”

“They were in the archive. Just hold on and try not to flail, I got this.” He reached out and snagged the cart as it floated past, then switched his grip to something a bit steadier. The bot was strapped down, but Sans thought he just might be able to get at it now. He just needed something to hook his feet into.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just use magic?” Blue asked innocently as Sans maneuvered around the cart.

“No????? Don’t you sense that?”

“Sense what?”

“Exactly.”

“What???????”

“I don’t sense anything, there’s no ambient magic field out here.” Which likely meant they probably weren’t on some planet colony. Maybe.

Blue gasped, his body going stiff against Sans’s back.

“Look, even humans need magic to live, I’m sure they got some kinda magic source around here somewhere. Don’t stress about it, let’s just worry about this stupid robot and its stupid plant for now. But uh, maybe try using as little magic as possible until we figure out a magic source.”

“How can you be so calm?!”

Sans shrugged, “Someone has to. Here, if you’re feeling pretty awake now see if you can help me pry this thing open. Just make sure your feet are nice and wedged in so you don’t go flying off.” The two got settled in and started scrabbling uselessly at the smooth, seemingly seamless surface.

“I saw it open up, I know there has to be a seam here, but I just can’t find it!”

“I know, this is some pretty slick designing. Too bad right now it’s not helping us.” Sans kind of wished he’d paid more attention to Wingding’s rambles about past dissections of these little scout robots he’d studied.

“Oh, there it is! Told you we’d catch up faster on foot.”

Sans and Blue both froze and turned their heads slowly. Drifting down the cramped hallway towards them was a pair of humans, presumably the same two from earlier. They reached the cart and grabbed on, feet dangling behind them. “You sure this is the one with the green flag?”

“It has to be, none of the others were positive.”

“It’s also the only one offline.”

“The green flag was probably just a dying glitch,” Sans said while slowly waving a hand in front of the humans.

Blue grabbed his arm and hissed, “What are you doing?”

Both humans looked confused as they stared down at what would be Sans’s and Blue’s feet if they could actually see them. “It’s broken, it probably glitched out and had a false positive.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing. They’ll find out for sure down at repair and maintenance. Think we should ride down with it?”

“Nah, the schedule’s way out of wack with the transport getting back early. Just check it has priority and let’s get back to it.”

“Ugh, I know right?” One of the humans looked something over, then nodded over to the other. “Chaz is going to be so ticked off if it turns out all this trouble is over a false positive.”

“So will I!” The pair laughed as they pushed off the cart and gracefully drifted away, still chattering on about schedules and priorities and workloads.

Blue shook the arm he hadn’t let go of yet, “What was that?! And why did it actually work?!?!”

“Just a side effect of the glamour. You are still wearing yours, right?”

Blue just gave Sans a LookTM.

“Alright, no need to get your hazmat suit in a twist. With a glamour on humans can technically still see us, they just don’t realize it. It’s the same for hearing us, only for some reason they’re more likely to hear a disembodied voice. But if you use magic to direct your voice…”

“You said to try not using magic.”

“… they think the voice they heard is inside their head instead. If you’re lucky they think it’s their own idea. Or think the other guy said it.”

“That seems like an awful risky thing to do while we’re up here all alone with no magic source and no idea what we’re doing.”

“Calculated risk. Plus we’re already up here purely on panic and hope and prayer, may as well push our luck a little.” He wasn’t going to mention how lucky they were just to have survived take off, let alone the whole trip here.

“We… really didn’t think this through, did we?”

“Look, the next scout ship isn’t scheduled to go back for another five years, unless they decide to send it back to finish the time it missed I figure we’ll have plenty of time to agonize over the next step once this emergency is taken care of. With that in mind let’s see if we can find some sort of tool to help us open this thing.”

“Or we can just ride this thing down to maintenance and wait for the machine or humans there to open it up.”

“What?”

“If this thing gets damaged they’ll notice and look all the harder, but if we just stick close there’s a very real chance we can be there when they pop it open the right way and just snatch the plant up before they can even get a good look at it.”

“Nice plan, I like the way you think, buddy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For things like “hormones” and “adrenaline” I think monsters would likely have different words as for us these are physical things that might or might not affect monsters. But I also don’t feel like coming up with a whole dictionary of terms and then having it in my end notes so I’m just sticking with familiar words, kthx.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone finally gets to see what was inside the little scout 'bot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some minor swearing.

Sans and Blue both giggled madly as they floated down the narrow, cramped hallway. It was a long one, seemingly endless, and there were no other robots or people in sight. No turn offs, no corners, no connections or crossroads, just a long stretch of monotone hallway broken up by handles at regular intervals. The perfect place to fart around in zero G so far as Sans was concerned. He was doing some mid air somersaults while Blue was literally bouncing off the walls. It was great!

“Sans! Sans, look!”

It took a little scrambling for Sans’s hand to find one of the handholds and stop his spinning. Luckily skeletons weren’t known for having particularly sensitive stomachs, or any at all really. He looked up to see Blue floating past, one fist straight out, the other tucked awkwardly to his side, one knee bent, the other leg pointing straight behind him. He was kind of listing to one side from Sans’s perspective, and going at an angle that would have him hitting a wall soon.

“That’s pretty cool.”

“I’m flying!” Blue hollered back with a huge grin.

Sans kicked off, keeping his whole body in a straight line as he followed after Blue. “Yeah, I guess this is the closest us land-bound monsters will get to self propelled flight.”

Blue huffed and moved to what looked like a standing pose, feet shoulder width apart and fist planted firmly on his hips. “You’ve never heard of the Superman pose?”

Sans just shrugged in response. Then he noticed the robots. “Blue! Look!”

Blue turned to look where Sans was pointing, just in time to see the robots going through what appeared to be a round hole the hallway ended on. “It’s fine, we’re right behind them.”

“And if they go in a lift or something we’ll never catch up.”

Blue cursed lightly.

“Here, I’ll be right behind you.” Sans was just about caught up to Blue, he held his hands in the “give you a boost” pose. Blue took his cue and kicked off Sans, leaving him spinning as he shot through the… doorway? Porthole? Aperture? Whatever you wanted to call it.

Unfortunately the boost meant Blue took most of Sans’s momentum, he was left spinning wildly and drifting vaguely backwards. Fortunately the hallway being so cramped meant that only lasted for a short time before Sans grabbed a handhold and took right off after Blue. He held his arms out to catch the doorway and look beyond it before zipping out into the unknown. Sans was glad he did, the room the doorway opened up into was wider, what would be the floor, ceiling, and walls of the corridor just one large cone leading out to the much wider cylinder around him. Oh, and the whole thing was spinning, like Sans just popped up through a hole in the center of a carousel.

“Sans! Over here!”

Sans looked over to his right where Blue was clinging to the doorway of what appeared to be a lift, hand waving furiously. Sans laughed to himself, guess he called that one. Fortunately the lift seemed to have a protective fence around it that extended along the cone until it was just short of the portal. Sans kicked off and grabbed the fence, then “climbed” it over to Blue.

“Hurry up,” Blue admonished as he reached out for Sans.

“I’m hurrying,” Sans shot back.

“Doors obstructed,” a calm, feminine voice chimed.

Blue just rolled his starry eyes and pulled Sans into the lift with him. The doors immediately shut behind them.

“Obstruction cleared,” the calm voice chimed alongside a cheery ding. The lift started moving, they could tell because the ceiling came down to greet them.

Blue was already giggling as he bounced around the inside of the cramped lift.

“We might want to be ready for it to stop, the floor will probably smack us otherwise.”

“Aw, but I’m having fun!”

“Well so long as we don’t fumble getting out with the robots,” Sans said with a shrug, then joined in the bouncing and giggling. The hum of the elevator quickly became background noise as they continued to play around. Wherever it was going it was taking a while to get there.

“Wait… am I falling?” Blue asked.

“I don’t think the lift is moving fast enough to count as falling.”

“No, I mean… I think I’m falling. Just a little.”

Sans stopped and looked at Blue. He was indeed drifting slowly towards the lift’s floor, and so was Sans for that matter. “Huh, wouldja look at that? Gravity.”

“Weird.”

“It seems even less than the moon right now.” They were both standing on the cart by then, Sans gave a little bounce and just as if there were still no gravity he nearly touched the ceiling, then started to drift slowly down.

Blue laughed and bounced as well. They continued to laugh and jump, the gravity slowly getting stronger as the lift continued. “Somehow this feels even weirder than no gravity!”

“Yeah, it kinda does. But eh, Mars gravity is enough for me, this is getting pretty tiring.”

Blue huffed and rolled his eye pips, but otherwise made no comment as Sans sat down on the cart next to their downed scout bot. Blue continued jumping in place even as each successive jump got shorter and shorter. “It feels about normal now.”

“Yeah, it does, hopefully that means we’re there and we don’t start hitting higher Gs.”

The lift came to a stop and gave out a cheery ding as the doors whooshed open.

“What timing!” Blue settled down on the cart and grabbed a strap for stability. The cart smoothly moved into a hallway completely identical to the one they’d gone into after leaving the ship: long, narrow, and lined with handholds.

“Huh,” Sans said as he stared at a passing handhold.

“What is it?”

“Either they didn’t bother designing different hallways for areas with gravity, or they kept the handholds in case of gravity failure.”

Blue looked at the handholds. “So… gravity can suddenly just… stop?”

Sans shrugged, “Maybe. If it’s artificial anyway, but even then it might be a slow stop.”

“But humans can’t do magic????”

It was Sans’s turn to roll his eye pips, “Of course they can. They may not be made mostly of magic like us but they still need it to live. But there are other ways to make artificial gravity, usually with centripetal force.”

Blue just blinked at him as they passed through another doorway.

“You’re late.”

The pair looked up to find another human, this one also in the dull blue coveralls, a full face mask, gloves, and boots, looming over the cart. They had a tablet in hand they were tapping at with a stylus.

“Oh, an obstruction? I’ll have to mark that for inspection to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” They stepped aside and waved the cart through. “Let’s see… check… check… hm… no error messages sent to the mama… oh! So _you’re_ the green flag! And from your mama’s logs there was a nice span of time before shutting down, likely unrelated. Well little buddy I’m sorry but the first thing to do is check for cargo, if you’re right I’m afraid your job is over and you won’t be getting any repairs.” The human pet the robot affectionately. “This’ll be huge though! I wonder what flavor of plant you found uh… Forty-Three.”

Sans couldn’t help leaning over to Blue and whispering, “I wonder too, not a lot can even grow in The Scar.”

“Probably a dandelion,” Blue whispered back. They giggled at his joke.

The human looked up from their frantic tapping, looked around, shook their head, then went back to whatever they were doing. Once they finished they slipped the stylus back into their tablet and set it down on a nearby table before heading over to where the cart had stopped.

Blue and Sans scrambled to hop off the cart and move out of the human’s way as they started unstrapping the scout robot, then set about attaching it to some sort of heavy frame that then lifted the bot up and into an upright position. It put the top of the robot just under head height for the human, which was pretty high up for them.

“How’re we going to get the plant?” Blue whispered anxiously, “Stand on each other’s shoulders?”

“Climb the frame?” Sans whispered back. The human was looking around the room again, but the door opening with a hiss of displaced air distracted them.

“Sam, why’d you call us down here?” Another human asked as three of them walked into the room, all of them also decked out in protective gear.

“This is the NAERU with the green flag, but for some reason it arrived out of commission. I was about to open up its cargo.”

Sans and Blue used the cover of the humans excitedly milling about and chatting to climb quickly up the frame and get into place. They were poised on either side of the robot, ready to lunch the moment it was opened. Fortunately the humans were lined up in a semicircle with a healthy amount of space between themselves and the robot.

“Considering their contamination levels every time they get back…” One human joked.

“What if whatever’s inside jumps out? Can plants do that?” Another said while shuffling nervously in place.

“Well the door’s locked, so at least we’ll be the only victims if it does.”

They all laughed nervously.

“I’m opening it now.”

“No wait! Let me get a video going.” The one that spoke quickly picked up the tablet and tapped frantically at the screen, paused, grabbed the stylus, then went back to their frantic tapping before holding the large thing in front of them while crouched a little. “Okay, all set.”

There were a few nervous chuckles, then the human standing closest to the robot tapped on a screen attached to the frame. A thin mechanical arm moved somewhere behind the robot, followed by the front splitting open. Sans and Blue both lunged, but it was Sans that got his hands around the clump of dirt with a leafy sprout sticking jauntily out of it. He pulled it close even as the dirt clump started to fall apart and spill over his hands.

“What? Where’d it go?!”

“I wasn’t seeing things, right? There was something there, right?!”

“Let me replay the video.”

“Maybe it just fell out? There’s so much dirt all over the floor.”

Sans jumped off the frame and scrambled to get out of the way as the humans all crowded in close to the robot, more dirt spilling around him. Blue followed shortly after and squeezed in close to Sans. “What do we do now?” Blue whispered worriedly.

“I dunno, stay in a corner until they give up and leave?”

“Works for me.” The pair shuffled as quietly as they could to the far side of the room.

“The dirt is making a trail? Look, it’s leading that way. Did the plant jump out?”

Sans and Blue looked down to find that indeed the crumbling pile of dirt Sans was trying to hold was continually falling between his phalanges and onto the floor. “Shit, find me something to hold this!”

Blue nodded, then wove between the humans’ legs to search through the repair shop.

“It just ends here, but I don’t see anything.”

“Maybe it ran out of dirt?”

The humans started looking around again, but none of them moved from where they were crowding Sans into a corner.

“There’s more dirt falling, where is it… wait! Is it on the ceiling?!” The humans all looked up as if they feared the plant were crawling along the ceiling like some alien horror movie.

“Here!” Blue said triumphantly and at full volume as he ran up holding what seemed to be a piece of some poor robot’s outer shell.

“Where? Who saw it?”

Sans glowered at Blue, who grinned sheepishly as he held out the wide, curved piece of plastic. Sans rolled his eye pips, then carefully placed the plant into the shell. Now without the dirt leading a trail right to them, they carefully shuffled out of the corner and away from the humans. Sans motioned to the door and Blue nodded.

They stood by the door, just to the side of a keypad they think is used to open it. Now to just wait for the humans to get bored and/or tired and give up. They stood there, occasionally scuffing a foot, watching the humans kind of wander around the room while continuing to talk aimlessly.

“Look at this still,” said the one that had recorded the whole thing while holding the tablet up to another, “there was clearly something green there.”

“Go frame by frame… and then it just blurred out and vanished.”

“You think it fell out? Jumped out?”

“Where’d it go, though? It’s not on the floor or ceiling.”

“Did it die? That was a long trip and I think plants need food and water too.”

“Then where’s the body? Plants don’t just turn to dirt when they die, right?”

“I’m calling up Aedynne, see if we can get a different angle on the security feed.”

“Find out if plants can even do this while you’re at it.”

“They have to, nothing else can explain this!”

Sans sighed and leaned against the door, thumbs hooked into his utility belt, then kicked up a foot and let out another sigh. This might be a while. Blue looked down at the wilted, yellowish bit of leafy greenery in his hands. “Oh my god,” he whispered softly, but with feeling, “it’s _kudzu_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did a little retconning last chapter, just wanted to clarify what the human work clothes look like. Pretty much expect them to be covered head to toe because… you know… working with things that just came back from a place covered in nuclear fallout.
> 
> Also I realize that after 1.5 centuries there should be enough language drift that Sans and Blue probably would have a hard time understanding the humans but sssshhhh… let’s just handwave that one.
> 
> NAERU: Non-Autonomous Earth Reconnaissance Unit


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sans and Blue get their first look at where they'd ended up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very minor content warning: vomit. Rather a character spits out a mouthful of food.

Blue and Sans ended up waiting a long time before the group of humans finally just called it quits. What else could they do? The plant was clearly nowhere to be seen, the only trace of its existence a blurry still and a trail of spilt dirt that only led to a dead end. The pair of skeletons had sat on the sidelines and watched the group tear the room apart and put it back together again twice before finally giving up and heading out.

Now they were trailing behind the gaggle of humans and listening to them gripe about their day as they headed towards the duo’s biggest threat yet: decontamination.

“It’s going to scatter all this loose dirt,” Blue whispered while motioning with the plant in his hands.

“I know,” Sans signed back, “but we can’t just stay here. If they have half a brain there’s no food or drinks on this side of decom.” And fewer places to hide, more restricted movement, and just generally not a good place for the two of them all around. “Maybe we can shield it?”

“But then the two of us won’t get properly decontaminated.”

“We can always come back and do it over again later, this is more important right now.”

They didn’t have much time, the last human was filing into the airlock. Blue just nodded in response and darted into the room, Sans hot on his heels. The humans were spreading out, their arms out and up, Sans and Blue had to huddle in the corner to avoid touching any of them. They hunched over the plant held between them as the cycle started. Luckily their gambit worked, only a small smattering of dirt ended up on the floor. Hopefully the humans wouldn’t even notice, or if they did they’d probably think it came from their clothes. Then the humans moved into a locker room where they started taking off their coveralls.

“What are you doing?” Sans hissed.

“Taking off my contaminated clothes,” Blue whispered back.

“They’ll notice if extra clothes randomly show up, especially non-uniform clothes, keep yours on.”

“We’re contaminated,” Blue said angrily. “The regulations-”

Sans put both hands over Blue’s mouth while staring at the humans around him. Blue's voice had risen and Sans was worried they’d actually heard him. The humans were looking around in confusion, but quickly went back to undressing. Sans sighed with relief and took his hands from Blue’s teeth.

“The regulations clearly state,” Blue started up again at a much lower volume.

Sans quickly cut Blue off with a slicing motion, then signed, “We aren’t back home, the regulations don’t apply.”

Blue huffed, then put the plant down on the ground between them and started signing himself, every movement exaggerated with big, slightly slow motions. “We are contaminated! This is a closed system!”

“We’ll find someplace isolated to stash our coveralls, we’ll need them when we go back.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I straight up hate this, but we’re here and we need to do what we can to keep Earth and monsterkind safe while also surviving long enough to get back.”

Blue glared, huffed, and stamped a foot, holding up and lowering his hands a few times before finally signing, “Fine!” aggressively. Then he picked up the plant and started marching after the humans, who Sans hadn’t even noticed filing out the door.

They both sat in silence for a while after that, sitting together in the back of some sort of monorail while the humans seemed to be lost in thought. The monorail stopped regularly, more people filing on each time. Pretty soon Sans and Blue were crammed into one seat trying not to bump elbows with any of the loud humans around them. The monorail stopped and the humans started spilling out.

“Must be the end of the line,” Blue commented at his regular volume.

Sans hushed him.

“What? They’re all talking, it’s not like anyone will notice or care.”

Sans looked up at all the humans happily chatting with each other or at seemingly no one, a few even had what looked like holographic screens projecting a video call in front of them.

“Come on, we’d best follow them.” Blue had already gotten up and was following the last few humans off the monorail.

Sans quickly got up and followed him, staring up at the mass of humans ahead of them. “Think all the humans will be just as distracted?”

“If we’re careful to only talk in busy areas then yes, yes I think they will be.”

“I wonder what they eat? Think they got grow lights and hydroponics around here?”

“Probably, they have to grow food **somewhere** , right? I mean, it has to be made from **something** after all.”

“Well all these schlubs just got off work, at least one of them is gonna stop by a food stall or grocer on the way home.”

“Oh! That’s a good point! But there are so many, how will we know who to follow?”

“It’s a little unethical,” Sans started, “but we can try eavesdropping?”

“It **is** a bit unethical,” Blue said, “but it’s not like they’re talking about anyone we know…”

They split up, ducking and dodging through a sea of legs and trying to keep up with the humans clearly in the middle of a call. This one was talking about watching some sort of event that evening, that one was just telling someone they were heading straight home, this one was griping about the annoying commute.

“Sans!”

Sans stopped and looked towards the shout, but hard to see with so many humans in the way. Instead he started weaving his way towards where he thought he heard Blue from. “Marco,” Sans called out casually.

“Polo!”

Sans adjusted course and quickly found Blue. “So, what’ve you got?”

“This guy and his friends are planning to head to a bar, they’re all meeting there,” Blue said just barely loud enough for Sans to hear. They followed behind the human Blue indicated, a rather average looking one wearing a skin tight onesie in day glow orange with black stripes over it.

“I could go for some greasy bar food,” Sans replied. “Think they got deep fryers in deep space?”

“Have we even left the solar system? I don’t think it counts as deep space if we haven’t gone beyond the Kuiper belt. Regardless, I have heard humans love their grease so I’m sure they still have deep fryers either way. I could go for a burger though, think they have chickens up here somewhere?”

“Maybe, chickens would be easier to keep in a small space than something like cows or sheep.”

“If they have hydroponics then it could easily double as fish farming. If nothing else I can hope for a grilled fish burger.”

They conversation naturally died as they followed the human onto a… well Sans wasn’t quite sure what to call it. It looked like a roofless trolley, or more like three roofless trolleys all attached to each other, or a tiny open air monorail without the rail. Come to think of it a trolley would have a rail or tracks too. Well whatever it was it had plenty of seats, they managed to snag the row behind their target and settled in. “Aw, man!” Sans said suddenly. “I just realized if there’s no cows there’s probably no cheese. No cheesy fries.”

Blue patted him on the back, “My deepest condolences.”

Sans sighed, then looked up and around to distract himself. He noticed everyone around them seemed to be engrossed in holographic displays surrounding them. The guy they were following was talking with someone, the one across the aisle from them was watching what he could only guess was a video game with some sort of robot looking AI as a picture in picture, and behind them he could see in reverse someone watching some sort of… documentary?

“… experts theorize it could be fluctuations in the magnetic field, but have no other explanation. Personally I think it’s evidence of a haunting.” The video, which previously showed a pair of chairs at a table moving on their own, suddenly shifted to a different robot looking AI against a backdrop of a light fountain. The AI was pastel purple and covered in a seemingly endless amount of bows and ribbons that jiggled madly with every jerky motion.

“Number six is a recording of a maintenance hallway in section 5-A.” The video cut to what appeared to be surveillance video of a very normal hallway, numbers ticking away in one corner. “What’s unusual about this hallway is it hasn’t change at all in nearly a century.” The AI’s sentence was punctuated by the video first doubling, then doubling again, then adding a new row and column until there were twenty-five versions of the hallway on screen, the only difference between them being the ticking numbers in the corners. “Even stranger, no maintenance bot has been down the corridor in any of the records still in the archives, yet the corridor remains unchanged and untouched by the hand of time.”

The AI was on screen again, a picture in picture of the corridor next to their head as they gestured to it. “What could be repelling the maintenance bots? Why has it remained unchanged? A time bubble? Or evidence of paranormal activity?” The corridor vanished, leaving only the AI and their sparkly backdrop. “Number five is the last recording from Arc Station Epsilon-”

“Of course,” the human watching the list scoffed, “that’s on like every creepy list and compilation.”

“i know, right?” Another hologram Sans hadn’t noticed to the side of the main video, this one of another human, said condescendingly. “At least the corridor was new. Boring, but new.”

“Sans, c’mon!”

“Huh?” Sans turned back around to find Blue already following their target off the trolley. Sans scrambled to follow, quickly catching up with Blue. They followed the human to a row of brightly colored buildings with lit up neon signs on their fronts. The human walked towards a cheery yellow building whose sign was in warm sunset hues.

“Sun… Juice?” Blue read skeptically.

“Maybe it means juice like a power source? Like electricity?”

“So like… Sun Power? That’s still a weird name.”

Sans shrugged, “I’ve seen weirder.”

The pair walked in, easily able to with no door in the doorway. They moved to the edge of the room so they could look around. The human they had followed was just sitting down at a table with two other humans already sitting at it, he waved his hand over the table an a holographic GUI popped up. Sans guessed it was the menu as the three of them seemed to be talking over options.

“I think it’s a juice bar,” Blue’s voice was heavy with disappointment.

Sans looked around, every single human besides the one they followed and his friends had a plastic cup with the sun logo from outside printed on it in front of them. “Huh, guess so. No thanks.”

“Would you rather wander around hoping we find a different option?”

Sans’s Soul gave a hungry twist, he hadn’t used so much magic over such a prolonged time in years and he was starting to feel it. “Guess not. But ugh! It’s juice.”

“Too sweet?” Blue started leading the way to the far corner, where an empty booth sat all on its lonesome.

“Yeah, not really one for a lot of sweets, especially really fruity stuff.”

“Places like this usually have vegetable juices too. And smoothies, peanut butter’s a pretty popular flavor.”

“Peanut butter sounds okay.”

Blue set the plant on the table before pulling himself up onto the seat, Sans did the same (minus the plant) on the other side of the table. “Is it just me or does it feel a bit different here than the rest of this place?”

“A little bit,” Sans agreed, “must have a nice ambiance.” Sans waved his hand over the table like he’d seen the guy that led them here do. Nothing happened. “Huh?”

“Are we in the wrong spot or something?” Blue tried waving over different spots of the table, lowering and raising his hand in an attempt to get it to work.

“It’s our glamours,” Sans said tiredly.

“Is there a way to turn it off without turning it all the way off?”

“The only way I can think of would be to draw the veil but 1) the computer would probably be disconnected and 2) I don’t know how. I’ve never needed to, no one has since the last human left Earth.”

“We could wait until there aren’t any humans around and drop it then?”

“What? Like when this place closes?”

“Well what do you suggest we do?” Blue asked grumpily.

“I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“More unethical suggestions?”

“I’m sorry, but we’re stowaways, we don’t have any money on us and even if we did we have no idea if they have the same currency. We don’t have a legal way to buy anything from the humans so long as we stay hidden, and we **have** to stay hidden.”

Blue slumped in his seat and groaned. “Why did I let myself get dragged here?”

“Because of this dumb thing,” Sans said bitterly as he pulled the plant to himself. “Here, I’ll hold it for now, see if you can snag us something. Maybe someone won’t like their flavor and throw it away, humans are wasteful like that.”

“Oh! That’s a good point.”

“But steal one if you have to, the magic drain’s starting to get to me.”

“That table’s leaving now!” Blue excitedly hopped down and raced over to said table, Sans followed behind with the plant in his hold. Blue clambered up a chair the moment it was vacated and stretched over the table to reach for an abandoned cup. He shook it, then shook his head, hopped down, ran over to the other recently vacated chair, clambered up it, and stretched over the table as far as he could.

“Just stand on the table.”

“That’s so unsanitary!”

“Knees then?”

Blue sighed, “Alright, but only because I’m sure someone will be by to wash it shortly.” He hooked a knee onto the table and pulled himself up, grabbed the cup, then grinned. “I think it’s still half full!”

“Cool, let’s go find a hidden spot to let our glamours down for a while.”

“Right! Maybe even some place we can spend the night.”

They wandered out of the juice bar and started heading around to see if there was any space behind the buildings, maybe some dumpsters to hide behind. No such luck, they were backed right up to a wall. They started wandering off in a random direction, trying to head away from humans.

“… it’s always a bit unpredictable where people will be hours later someplace you’ve never been before,” Sans was saying. “Secluded won’t be enough, hidden would be best, someplace with some sort of entrance we can cover up. I know it’s a stereotype but if the air vents-”

“Blurg,” Blue said and leaned over, a hand up to his mandible.

“What happened?”

“This smoothie, it’s leaking.”

“What? The cup?”

“No, from my mouth. I tried to drink it and it didn’t absorb.” Blue moved his hand away to show a kind of pink-orange liquid dripping thickly from his chin.

“Oh no, is that why the human didn’t finish it? It was made wrong?”

“I think I heard that human food doesn’t just absorb like monster food, you have to push it through your body.”

“… How?!”

Blue wiped away as much of the brightly colored sludge as he could and shook his hand, then made a face as he sucked the straw again. “Urk!” He leaned forward again, dripping more. “That wasn’t it, maybe if I…” He sucked again. This time no smoothie dripped out, in fact the dripping that was still going suddenly stopped. “Okay so you kinda have to make a body to push it through.”

“I have to what?!”

“Make a body to push it through,” Blue repeated.

“That sounds like a lot of work, how much magic is in there? If it’s not enough it’s going to cost more magic to absorb than we’ll get from it.”

“I’m not sure, but it’s gotta be better than nothing. We’ll just… have to find some place to let our glamours down and try to stay there whenever we aren’t stealing food. For the next five years.”

“I’m gonna pray to the Delta Rune that they decide to send a ship back ASAP since this one came back early.”

“Here, have some.” Blue held the straw out to Sans.

Sans reluctantly formed as little body as he thought he could get away with and sucked up some of the smoothie, it was annoyingly fruity. “Yuk, way too sweet.”

“It is,” Blue agreed, then he took another drink. “But we need to have something.”

“Let’s sit down at least, maybe if we find a quiet corner we can let our glamours down for a bit.”

“Alright! How about we try over there? I don’t see any humans.”

“Sure, let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sun Juice is a sun lamp juice bar, because when you live in space you need to go spend time under a sun lamp or have severe mental and health issues. All restaurants and recreation centers that feature sun lamps have sun in their name and as part of their logo, they also keep track of how long patrons are in there and notify them if they’ve been in too long.


End file.
